Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Understanding what my superpower is, and that is helping people do what they're doing better than they're doing it.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Organizations out there oftentimes don't feel they have their finger on the pulse.
[00:00:09] Speaker C: I realized that international is so much more than just the shipping.
[00:00:13] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gearhart.
[00:00:15] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gerhardt. You just heard some snippets from our show. We had amazing people on. Listen for the rest of it.
[00:00:22] Speaker F: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it hard. Now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:33] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
[00:00:41] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law. And I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a content creation studio with the focus on podcasting.
[00:00:51] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities about their business journey. Journeys. Well, this week we're going to be showing how building a brand takes just as much grit as playing in the big leagues. Our guest today is Chris Denhart, a serial entrepreneur and e commerce expert, founder of Dugout Mugs, Big Golf, and the Denhart Media group with over 70 million in online sales.
[00:01:18] Speaker E: Wow. And then we have something really exciting too. Alex Yancher is the CEO of Passport. Do you want to sell your stuff overseas? It's really kind of hard to get over that hump and know how to do it. He helps you do that.
[00:01:32] Speaker D: I love the international stuff.
[00:01:33] Speaker E: I do, too. And the name of this company is Passport. And then Jim Ratchnick is a cybersecurity innovator, so we all need that. Oh, my gosh. I can't tell you how many times I get this message. We're resetting. Did you ask for a reset code on Facebook? I'm like, no. But he's redefining how organizations manage risk through his Haylock Security Labs and Reasonable Risk groundbreaking platform. He's CEO of both of those. So exciting to hear how he's helping us stay as safe as we can anymore.
[00:02:02] Speaker D: I can hardly wait.
[00:02:04] Speaker E: And later on, we'll hear from our friend Alicia Morrissey, a great jazz singer, and we've got secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
[00:02:11] Speaker D: But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business Journey. Two in five Americans are business owners or they're thinking about starting a business. And so we. We want to ask our panel a question. What's the one rookie mistake you made and that you would make again because it got you here. So what mistake did you make that you would make again because it got you to where you're at today. And let's start with Chris. Chris, welcome to the show. Tell us about the rookie mistake you'd repeat.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Being naive, just chasing after something and not knowing really what the risks were, because I wanted to. And I think authenticity, especially in a world we live in today, it's very rare and especially in business. And I think being naive to the risks and the dangers of business, just being dumb and happy and chasing after something cool, you never know, maybe you'll shoot for the. Whether they say shoot for the moon and catch a star. Anyway, I'd make that mistake over and over again.
[00:03:12] Speaker D: Alex, rookie mistake that you'd repeat.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: I'm in the startup world. I'm in San Francisco here, and. And I grew up learning that all you have to do is focus on the product, build the best possible product and they will come. Maybe in some businesses that's true in like a social network or some consumer businesses, But I'm in the B2B world. We sell software and services, and that advice couldn't be further from the truth. So I naively started and just focused on the product.
Really didn't hire. I mean, it took us like five years to hire a first marketer. At the end of the day, distribution and marketing and sales, that's, I'd say, where a good, solid 65% of my time and effort goes now. But it's an interesting way you phrase the question. It's a mistake I would repeat again because at the end of the day, it's the reason we have such a great product is because I was fully focused on that and not on the sales side in the beginning.
[00:04:10] Speaker D: Great comment, Jim. Tell us, what was the rookie mistake you made that you'd Repeat?
[00:04:14] Speaker B: In my 20s, I started an online restaurant reservation system with several partners. I had two partners. One of them was a very talented professor. At the time, he was a child prodigy, had never failed at anything. And what we learned along the way is he was a very bright individual, but he didn't have real life experience and the business didn't work. And I learned that the partners you choose are even more important than the business model itself. I would do it again because it's helped me learn the power of the right team.
[00:04:42] Speaker D: The takeaway from all this is that sometimes the mistakes that we regret are the ones that teach us the most. So I learned a lot from my experience, and I think that's just made me a better attorney business person. Now it's time for our interview with Chris Dennert. He's the guy who turned a baseball bat into a $52 million mug. Literally 52. From Dugout Mugs to big golf and his continuing empire, Denhart has built businesses that have been featured on forbes, the Inc. 5000 and national TV, all the while proving that you don't need a fancy MBA to dominate e commerce. So welcome to the show, Chris.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:05:22] Speaker D: How did you get into the business of making mugs out of baseball bats?
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Understanding what my superpower is, and that is helping people do what they're doing better than they're doing it. And Randall Thompson, a buddy of mine, he's actually the one that invented the mug, and he came to me with the idea.
So Dugout's my ninth company, and I've. I've had several different things along the way, but the reality is I understand how to communicate with people. And it's in its purest sense, like what I do, I communicate with people extremely well.
And I am a master of networking, sales, marketing, branding.
So really, when anything comes to my desk, I put it through a certain set of criteria. And if it meets these criteria, it's a project that I'll take on a lot of times from a consulting standpoint. But all the consulting really ever was and is is an opportunity to vet out projects. Do I like the under operator? Is it fun? Can I play with my friends? Can I leverage my network? Does it take time away from my family? Would my kids be proud of me? You know, know, like these are the criteria that I go through. And it's, it's never really ever revolves around money. You know, I always say chase the happy, not the money, and you'll usually walk away with both. You know, I, I think that's kind of how I came to be with Dugout mugs. Randall had a cool idea, brought it to me. 70,000 in sales.
And you know, I said, hey, look man, you know, let's take this thing for a ride. And that's what we did. And doubled, double, doubled, doubled, year over year. We're the fastest growing licensee Major league baseball for couple decades. And at this point, we're $55 million in sales. We're in every state, every stadium, every mug behind me is autographed by a person I've worked with from Rod Carew and Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan and Ken Griffey Jr. And it's pretty Wild. The things I get to do and call it a job and then I look for synergy. And Big Golf came along, same opportunity. I took 60% of the company just to be involved and I brought it under the same roof as I have with Dugout. I had a near death experience when my daughter was born 10 years ago. And when I came out the other side of it, there are a few commitments I made and one of them is being unapologetically authentic. So like what you get right here is who you're going to see in the street, who you're going to see on a stage, who you're going to see at a mastermind. I don't change really for anybody.
It's very refreshing.
The other is to operate in alignment with some of those criteria or the goals that I was telling you about there. So when things come across my path, it's either who I am and which direction I'm going or it isn't. So I do, you know, I have a company around beer and baseball and golf and cigars and business and consulting. And again, I think everybody's success journey is unique. You measure your success with somebody else's ruler. I don't think that's smart. I think, you know, more reflection on what's a success to you and then kind of build that lifestyle by design. And I think that's what I did. And again, I chased the happy and the fun and not the money with Dugout and we ended up with both. And the proof's in the pudding.
[00:08:25] Speaker E: Now I want to go back to a couple things you said. One, you licensed all of this copyrighted and trademarked material from the baseball league, right? So that's part of your success. Because if people try to just take that and steal it, how can they get married?
[00:08:39] Speaker D: Oh, that's not a good idea. Listeners, if you're thinking about trying to rip off major league baseball, football or anybody, don't do it.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: So that's the licensing side. Yeah, I think, I mean I have, I have a large intellectual property portfolio. You know, we have patents on several of our products. We have trademark, we actually have trade dress. So we're strong. But I mean, you know, you guys are in ip, right? So what I always found, and I had this conversation early on with Randall now, intellectual property can I believe, especially with like design patents and things like that, it's only can go so far, people can work around and things. So I, I had the whole mentality of do we want to play to win or do we want to play to not lose. And I feel like a lot of that is defense, whereas offense will beat defense in most cases. And that's what we decided to do. Like we went hard in the paint, we went offense hard and we hit the market and the speed to market principle and we just didn't let up for years.
[00:09:38] Speaker E: I'm hearing this more and more. I didn't hear this like a year ago, but with all the authenticity and everything coming up now, I hear it all the time now. It's know your why, why are you doing what you're doing? And that tides you through the bad times, it helps you in the good times. And what is your core why? I think it's to have fun and take care of your family.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: I think one of the biggest lies that people tell themselves and everybody else is that they're doing it for their family. When the reality is if, if you ask your kids what they really want or your spouse what they really want, they want you there.
They don't want you traveling 150 days a year missing the dances, missing the recitals, missing the things.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: So I have a pretty core belief that I don't really believe in work life balance either. Sometimes you're working, it's all life, you know, sometimes you're working, sometimes you're not, you know. And if you do it right, and which is what I tried to focus on is it's blurry. What I like to do and what I have to do and what I get to do are just kind of all jumbled together in this giant bucket that I get to live in. Very specifically, my why is to live an experiential life. Because at the end of it, that's all you really have, is a story that you built.
[00:10:49] Speaker D: Our guest today is Chris Denhart, a serial entrepreneur and E commerce expert, founder of Dugout Mugs, Big Golf and the Denhart Media Group. So Chris, what part of your identity do people most misunderstand about you?
[00:11:04] Speaker A: I think the authenticity they assume it's probably a bits of it are a facade. But I think that's because it's so rare that somebody says what they think and does what they say and shows up consistent every single time. So again, I'm pretty good at breaking down walls with people pretty quickly. But there's always going to be those who have been jaded, who have been manipulated and things like that. So they have a little bit more of the reservations.
But that's what consistency does. That's the water through the rock turns into a river, you know, it just wear them out. Because I show the same way every single time. I think that's probably one of the. The things that people misunderstand or, or my. I'm very direct because why not be, you know, just get to the point and let's address it. Or not.
[00:11:55] Speaker E: You know, I'd want to circle back to your business acumen a little bit. This is obviously what you said is super important to people that want to start a business. You though, have been able to take E Commerce and really blow it out. And if somebody wants to start an E commerce business, what is the first thing you would tell them? Do they need to know the business really well? Do they need to know how E commerce works? Do they need a coach? Like, how would you start?
[00:12:20] Speaker A: In its purest form, you're selling a thing to a person.
I don't think that needs coaching. You just need to not have a crappy thing. You need to have some passion behind what you're representing.
You need to be authentic and not worry about ruffling feathers. If so, if I'm, if I stand, if I have this stance or that stance or, you know, just go, you're winning or learning. I think that's probably the easiest way to put it. Like you're winning or learning. And if something doesn't work, don't do it again.
Keep trying. I think the. Just the stubbornness of.
I mean, you gotta be really. You gotta have thick skin and a short memory, you know, and just keep rolling. And I always say, don't fall in love with potential. And I think that's important because a lot of people come up with an idea or a product or a thing, and it's like, it's kind of stupid. I. It's. It's already done, you know, it's. It's not done as good as this one. This one, this one. It's saturated. Like, I think having some kind of USP unique selling proposition or model or something that's new and fresh. And I also say make sure it's something that you're somewhat passionate about. And because there are plenty of bad days in business, not just E comm.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: In business.
And a bad day with. Even with good people is still a bad day. But a bad day with good people can be a good day. You know what I mean? Like, I think surrounding. And you touched on it, you know, surrounding yourself with the right people is crucial. And just being just stubborn, if you want to do it, just shut up and do it. You know, don't overthink it to death. You're selling a thing to a person, and either they buy it or they don't. And if they don't buy it was too expensive, you didn't convey the value, or they didn't like you. You fix one of those three things and try again and try again and try again. You know, I talk often on stage, and one of the things I absolutely love to say is, it's not somebody else's job to remember you. It's your job to be unforgettable. So when you go from a marketing perspective, think like that. Like, what can I do to be memorable? How do I get them to not forget me and what we discussed and what I'm offering?
And I think that, with consistency, really helps solidify a brand.
[00:14:25] Speaker D: Well, we're here with Chris Dennert, Dennert Media group, and also biggolf.com and dugoutmugs.com when did you know that Dugout mugs was going to be a success?
[00:14:35] Speaker A: My previous venture was Print On Demand Apparel. There was a company actually out there in San Francisco is where they were based. It was called Teespring several years ago, and I had a bunch of fan pages on Facebook, probably about 7 million fans. And we would just print and print. We did over $20 million just t shirt sales. And when I looked at a mug for the first time, you know how we hollowed out baseball bat barrel? This was just a blank canvas. So to me, it's like, oh, okay. So I can just put.
Find what people resonate with, Put it on something cool. Ask them if they want to buy it. They say no. Ask them why. Right. And so. So it was really simple. I. I simplify things. That's one of the things I feel like I do best, is I just simplify things.
And when I. I sat down and I spoke with Randall about the company, I told him. I was like, dude, like, you're gonna have to quit your job, like, this week and call me back, and we're gonna take this thing for a ride. And we went from 70,000 to 1.1 to 2.5 to, like, 7 to 9 to 13 5. I mean, we just right up the.
Right up the ladder. But I knew it from the beginning because it's something I had done before. And I think that's a belief, and belief systems are extremely important when it comes to entrepreneurship and business. I believe that if you don't believe you could achieve something you can't. Conversely, if you do believe you can, you will. Right. So I always relate it to a balloon. Like a balloon's, you know, about yay big and you blow it up as big as it can go and you let it sit there for a few minutes, you let it go. It'll never go back to that original size.
It's expanded. It's forever expanded. And that's how I look at just the mentality of entrepreneurship is like, once I knew I could do a million dollars in sales in a day. I can't unknow that, right? Once I knew I could do $20 million of T shirts and never carry a single piece of inventory. You can never unknow that. So now you take these beliefs and you multiply and you recreate it. And I think that's really important. So being around others who have achieved things that you can't wrap your head around until you believe them, because then that's expansion. You'll never grow back to that original, shrink back to that original size.
[00:16:46] Speaker D: We're here with Ken Denhart from dugoutmugs.com and also biggolf.com and also denhartmediagroup.com we have to take a commercial break right now. Stay tuned. We have intellectual property news and secrets of the entrepreneurial mind coming up. And don't forget to experience more of Passage to Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram X and YouTube or by subscribing to our podcast. Anywhere you get your podcasts, Just look for the Passage to profit show on any of these platforms. We'll be back right after this.
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[00:19:20] Speaker F: Now back to passage to profit once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:19:24] Speaker E: And our special guest, Pris Denner, who has built many very successful companies and right now is the CEO of Dugout Mugs. Well, he calls himself the cleanup hitter, but nobody really believes that.
And we've been talking about what's important to him and what's important for success.
And now we want to get into something really fun. We want to hear his stories.
So, Chris, tell us a really cool story.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: There's a lot of them. I would start with probably one of the coolest collaborations that we had an opportunity to do. It's right over my shoulder, right there. So my buddy wrote the movie the Sandlot, David. Mickey Evans and David and I connected and we decided to collaborate not only on a Legends Never Die mug, which is a full wrap of all the boys on the Sandlot. The famous photo from the movie and the day we spent with David was pretty incredible. Was at a beach bar, no shoes on, just hanging out, having some cocktails and talking about the movie. And we brought in the, the. The audio visual team to create some really cool content.
And our relationship just developed from there. And we have a hat now, Legends Never Die hat, that has the photo printed underneath the bill. And it's all exclusive to Dugout.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: So we get to do some cool projects like that. And, you know, I always enjoy going cool places and doing fun things with, with awesome people.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: I think anybody could probably relate to that. So our mugs are used all the time for corporate gifting. Big companies, you know, Capital One and T Mobile and Hard Rock and Coke, Pepsi, Budweiser, they all buy our mugs and they gift them out as corporate gifting. Also, we Do a lot of charity stuff with our Cheers to charity program. And Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, famous Yankee, famous Oakland Athletic, has us at all of his events. And this past year, I remember my wife and I were there, and at one point it was me and her and Dave Chappelle and Barry Bonds just standing here hanging out, watching Reggie Jackson and 50 Cent and all these people performing like, you know, 10ft away. And it was like, man, what a cool, fun night. And then I go inside to eat, and I'm sitting with Ozzy Smith, Mike Schmidt, and Andre Dawson, three Hall of Famers sitting there. We're talking about it. And they were arguing over who had a dugout mug first, which I thought was interesting. And then the next morning, I was golfing. I was got. And I get to golf in the event. And I sat down. It was just me and EMT Smith at breakfast. And then Tim Tebow walks over with Urban Meyer, and they asked if they can sit with us. And I'm like, yeah, and Mr. Thibaut, you can sit with us, no problem.
And then Urban grabbed my mug and said, tim, have you seen these? He's like, oh, yeah, that's Chris. He's from Florida. I was like, oh, my God, what's going on? And then John Smoltz is next to me, and then Barry Bonds is on the other side, and I'm just sitting here eating breakfast. Like, just talk. I mean, it's. It's things like that. You can't really. You can't really buy your way into some of these types of things. And, you know, just. Just to have those experiences and to have those conversations and be in a room that I belong in. Right. And there's a lot of belief that comes with that. I believe.
I vividly believe that I belong in every single room I'm in, in every conversation I'm in, I belong there. You know, and when you carry yourself that way, it's amazing how the. The. The process of the just manifestation and things that happens in my life. It's awesome. A lot of blessings land on my lap because of it, you know, the way I. Way I operate.
[00:22:59] Speaker E: Well, I.
I'm really in awe that a famous person knows who you are.
It's like no famous person knows who I am.
[00:23:08] Speaker D: So you got a certain sort of psychic boost from being there. Anything else that you think helped you along? I mean, did you.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Perspective and mentality is everything. I mean, process of manifestation is. I mean, I believe in it very much, and I think the way I operate and operate in alignment Consistently. That's why I end up in the places I do. You know, these aren't revelations I get while I'm at a place. It's like, damn it, dude, you belong here too. Right? Like maybe that just the gratification of being included, not because of who I pretended to be, but because who I am.
Because again, I'm not going to put up a facade for anybody. I don't care who you are. And that's what's, I think the most rewarding is that being authentic, authentically me got me to where I am and it's going to take, continue to take me further and put me in the places that are a lot of fun to be. That I think is the most rewarding.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: So if you are fortunate enough to meet other, you know, famous people or sports stars, it is sort of a validation, right?
And it does give you confidence, right. In the sense that if these people with these skills and experiences are accepting you, then you must not be so bad. Right? So I think we're all a master of something, you know, and so I think that's a great thing. Chris Denhart, a serial entrepreneur and E commerce expert, founder of Dugout Mugs, Big Golf and the Denhart Media Group. Thank you very much for joining us on this segment, Chris. It's been amazing. Where can people get in touch with you?
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Dugoutmugs.com and biggolf.com One of the things I'm proudest of is the 60,000 five star reviews we have online. I think that speaks volumes. We don't have to sell ourselves anymore. Everybody's doing it for us. I feel like.
[00:25:01] Speaker D: Great Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:25:06] Speaker E: We're adding a new segment to the show. It's about AI because what we're finding is we of course get really super smart people on the show every week and all of them are using AI in their businesses. And a lot of people haven't really figured out good ways to use AI in their business. So we're going to ask everybody how they're doing it. So, Chris, we'll start with you. How are you using AI in your business?
[00:25:25] Speaker A: With E Commerce, it's a little more unique on how to utilize AI, but what we've found to be successful and scalable is leveraging it for customer service.
I think people are starting to come around to the idea that they're being helped by a program.
They just need help and want help now. So the customer service side of our business has really progressed with AI. It answers immediately. It through API, can communicate through Shopify and get tracking information, make changes to orders, everything. And typically when we spike around playoffs and World Series and Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, you know, typical buying seasons, we would have to add another second or third, even third customer service person. Whereas now with AI, it's infinitely scalable. So not only is it more efficient, more accurate, doesn't sleep, it's. It accomplishes what three people could do in our peak season, which allows us to operate faster. And when we're doing, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a day in revenue and we can last an extra two or three days, that's significant, right? The other is design. AI has really helped in a major way from our, from a design standpoint, because a lot of people want something, but they don't know what they want. You know, our stuff is so customizable. They're like, oh, I want something that's kind of like this and kind of like this and kind of like that. Well, you throw that into AI and it'll throw up an image that's like, oh, that's almost exactly what I was talking about. And then we just clean it up a little bit. So it's really shortened the, the distance between conception and something tangible. So those two areas and I mean, it's, it's probably saved us, minimum, $70,000 a year.
Just, it's more efficient, more effective, and it's immediately saved us, you know, probably closer to like a hundred thousand dollars a year. And that's just for now. I know the things with Google and with Facebook and a few of the areas where we do paid traffic, the split testing, the split testing and the creatives and these types of things to lean into AI for that type of work is probably the 2.0, but once that's dialed in, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see.
[00:27:38] Speaker E: Great.
[00:27:38] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:27:40] Speaker E: So, Alex Yancher with passportglobal.com, how are you using AI for your business?
[00:27:45] Speaker C: First of all, I really like Chris's answer. We're also doing a lot with our agents.
So let me give you a little context. We have about 220 people in the company.
We do internationalization software, and we're vertically integrated with our own logistics. So we also have three warehouses around the US So it's really a broad range of things and skills and types of people that work at Passport. And we made a big announcement actually a week ago that every single call that we have, internal or external, has to have one of those recorders on to transcribe the call and record the call.
And people were a little bit iffy about it because it feels like Big Brother's watching you and all that. But we approached it and communicated to the company that this is actually a opportunity to level up ourselves, you know, ourselves as employees, ourselves as teammates, managers, and all that. And this is one big stepping stone that we're taking as a company. So some of the benefits we. One is sometimes even if you're trying to be engaged in a call, you want to take notes. Nothing wrong with that. I take notes. But when you take notes, you're kind of going like that, and the person feels like you're not engaged, and they can't see that you're writing something down. It makes it look like maybe you're on your phone or you're typing something.
So I personally love. I went to Cal. We had this person that would sit by the professor at the edge. It was called Black Lightning Notes. And they would take notes. So you don't have to take notes during class. And you just buy those notes. So it's kind of, kind of reminded me of that. So I thought, hey, why don't we just do this? This is now possible with AI it's so fast and easy. It's essentially free on an incremental basis.
And after every call, you have a transcription of the whole call. And you don't need to play that game. Like, what did she want again?
Did I ask her to do that? You know, and you also get to be present during that call. And then you get to do so many other. That's just like base level blocking and tackling.
Good call hygiene, you know, that. That becomes much easier with the call recorder. But the other thing that we're trying to do now. And I'll report back, jury's still out. But we're trying to run those calls through AI to grade them. You know, how did the salesperson do on this particular call based on this criteria, did this manager provide good, honest feedback to the. To the worker?
[00:30:08] Speaker E: The.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: Do they use blamey language? You know, like things like that. You can run it through AI and you could have.
And you could have an opportunity to really level yourself up in a very objective and I would say a key to all this unemotional way. Like, it's one thing to get feedback from your manager, even if you're somebody who feels like they could hear feedback, even when it's negative, it's still a little bit tinged with emotion.
And then there's some people who can't Take feedback at all. You know, we've all worked with those kind of people. But when you're getting feedback from AI that's just objectively reading your transcript and watching it and giving you the points, it's much easier to hear it and not get emotionally attached and feel attacked or something like that. So I'm really excited. This is like one big step that we took in the company. So, like, every single call now that we have, it's me and dated. Unless it's like, you know, we have exceptions. You want to have sometimes a private conversation that's not memorialized, that's fine. Of course, you don't have to have the recorder on, but free of those kind of situations. Pretty much every single call, internal and external, is being transcribed at this point at Passport.
[00:31:16] Speaker E: Well, that's another creative way to use it. That's awesome. Jim Marochnick reasonable risk.com how are you using AI in your company?
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting. Great for feedback from Alex and Chris. You know, both of our companies, Reasonable Risk of the software company and Haylock, the consulting company, are focused in cybersecurity. And AI is definitely one of the most powerful tools available to companies today. But like any technology, it brings with it power. But there are risks that need to be managed. You know, risks such as security and privacy. You know, AI often gets fed sensitive data that could be open to companies exposing private information. Right.
The other thing that people don't really think much about is reliability and data integrity. You know, AI can sometimes make mistakes, and the companies that are making decisions off of those mistakes are still responsible for those outcomes. I'm going to tell you an actual story. I was on vacation with my family. We're out of the country. And my kids were so excited to show me how they could take a photograph of a menu in Spanish and immediately translated to English. And I was very excited, too. I did the same, and I quickly translated and I started ordering food for my family. And the waiter looked at me like, what are you talking about? I was ordering something that he had no idea what I was talking about. So just to regain footing, I kind of pride myself on thinking quickly on my feet activity. And I went to a dollar amount. I said, I will have this thing that costs, you know, $7.43. He looked at me, goes, we don't have anything like that at all. At this point, I started feeling like, what is going on? And my kids took a picture of the menu.
AI was feeding us. Just, I don't know where it was getting the information was completely wrong. And I see the correctness of AI is something people often don't think about. When we go to Google, it is a matching algorithm and it's very, very good. People are beginning to use AI as an advisor. But when you go to your. Let's think about the human, human behavioral science behind this. When you go to someone to get advice, first you go to someone that you trust in that area and second, you assess their degree of confidence in that area. Right. We're going to ask Chris Dernard about, you know, about E commerce and about sports. Well, you might ask me about cybersecurity. When AI comes back, do you know what degree confidence AI has in that answer? So one little trick, one little technique is you can actually ask AI at the end of every single answer to tell you the degree confidence and it'll just build that in everything it responds. When AI comes back, whether it's Chad, GPT or any other LLM and it says, I'm 65% confident in that answer. Now you're going to think about should I move forward with that or should I get some more information? We just kind of assume that AI is like Google.
[00:33:54] Speaker D: Elizabeth's writing that down, by the way, because she uses AI a lot and it's super powerful.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: So let me keep going. How we're to answer your question, how are we using AI? So because companies are still responsible for these outcomes and those outcomes could have risks related to security or data integrity, what we've started to do is we offer services around identifying where is AI being used in your company, all instances of AI, how are people using AI and allowing you to monitor and control putting in some guardrails of acceptable use, acceptable within your organization values. Maybe you don't want certain LLMs being used, but I think the key here is that most people are focused on the reward but not the risk.
Help companies balance the two and let your employees use AI in a way that's in line with your organizational values. That's how we're offering that as a service and that's kind of how we use AI.
[00:34:50] Speaker E: That sounds awesome. Really?
[00:34:52] Speaker D: Yeah. At Gearhart Law, we have an AI company that is helping us implement some processes. So far I haven't been that impressed. And maybe part of it is there's a, sometimes a reluctance on the part of people to adopt these new technologies because they're concerned that part of their job may go away. But from our perspective, we're using AI to help manage our docket meetings. So we have meetings on A weekly basis where we go over cases and discuss what needs to be done. So the team communicates about those and we make sure that everything is followed up on and we use the software to track those cases. And we've been using AI to listen, you know, record the meetings and then provide inputs that can be put back into the database to help us stay on top of assignments that, you know, need to be completed in order to make sure our work gets done in the right way. The challenge has been that either the information is just wrong, number one or number two, it's not specific enough to be that helpful. So as enthusiastic as we are to embrace AI for our purposes, it's not there yet. On that one topic, I think what Jim said is true. You have to double check this stuff and make sure it's correct. So while you might gain a little bit of time, you still have to have somebody go over it or a couple of people go over it to make sure that the data that's being put back in the system is correct. So that's how we're using it. We're trying, but it's not really where I want it to be yet.
[00:36:35] Speaker E: I use it a lot for research and I do, to Jim's point, I use ChatGPT because that's the one most people use. I use Perplexity and Perplexity actually now if you have the paid version, can go to a bunch of different LLMs to find the best one to answer your question.
And then I started, I was using cloud, but now Perplexity has cloud. But then I also use Gemini, Google's Gemini, because I feel like it's going to have the most accurate answers about Google.
But it wasn't that good a year ago when I was using all four of them and now it's a lot better.
But with ChatGPT 5, which has just come out last month In August of 2025, supposed to be super duper. I tried to have it design a brochure for me and it did, was kind of good, but it misspelled something and so I got into a big fight with it. I was like, can you please?
[00:37:25] Speaker D: You're fighting with ChatGPT, doing the same, probably not going to win that one.
[00:37:29] Speaker E: But same thing over and over again. I'm like, how can I stop you from doing this? And guess what it said spend more money, Upgrade your account.
[00:37:38] Speaker D: Upgrade your account. Oh, you get the good spelling if you pay more. Got it.
[00:37:42] Speaker E: So yeah, I think AI is a double edged sword, right?
[00:37:45] Speaker D: Yeah, that's Great. We have to take a commercial break now. Stay tuned. We're going to have Secrets of the Entrepreneurial mind and also intellectual property news coming up right after this message.
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[00:39:41] Speaker G: 8007-3853-3280-0738-5332-800738-53332. That's 800-738-532. Pay four bucks by zero debt.
[00:39:56] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:40:00] Speaker D: We're a nationally syndicated radio show heard on 38 markets across the U.S. we'd like to do a shout out to our affiliate WBCH 12:20am in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Michigan. Also, our podcast is ranked in the top global 3% of podcasts and we've also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. So subscribe to the Passage to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and on the Iheart app. And now it's time for intellectual property news.
[00:40:37] Speaker E: Did you know that the patent system has its own court of appeals?
[00:40:43] Speaker D: Well, I knew that. Did you know that?
[00:40:45] Speaker E: Well, I knew that because of a patent agency, but I don't think a lot of people knew that.
[00:40:49] Speaker D: Oh.
[00:40:50] Speaker E: And so presiding over case law, right?
[00:40:53] Speaker D: Yeah. Intellectual property is a federal law managed by the federal court system, and any case that's decided in a federal district court can be appealed to the First Circuit court of appeals. Right. So the idea behind this was to try to create consistency among intellectual property decisions. Well, there's been a judge there that's been there for quite a while, Pauline Newman. She's brilliant jurist, but she's 98 years old and she refuses to leave the court.
So she's been fighting to stay on while the chief judge of the Federal Circuit has been trying to kick her off. And this has been going on now for about five years. It's kind of a shame that this is happening. I mean, we, we hear a lot of talk these days about the judiciary and the qualification of judges. And unfortunately, this kind of controversy throws a little shade, I think, on sort of the institutional aspects of intellectual property. So people want to feel confident that their cases are getting decided by cogent people. But when somebody's 98 years old, that can throw that into question. Right.
I don't know. At the rate I'm going, I don't know what I'll be like when I'm 98 if I make it that far. She took cognitive tests like in her mid-90s, and she came out okay. I watched a couple of interviews with her and I was impressed. She's a lot smarter than I am, and I thought that she could be a great judge. But I understand that the chief judge of the Federal Circuit doesn't like her for some reason, and this is as much about her age as it is about other things. But anyway, I think it's time now to get to our presenters.
[00:42:36] Speaker E: We're going to go to Alex yancher first with passportglobal.com he's also on LinkedIn. He's the co founder of Passport, and he has a lot of kudos of his own. Before founding Passport, he served as COO at Pantry and held finance roles at Facebook and Morgan Stanley. So he also advises and invests in startups. So he's no stranger to the entrepreneurial world and Alex, tell us all about what you're doing now with Passport.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: I started Passport about eight years ago and before that, actually one of the companies is a company called Lynx L, Y N K S. It's a play on words. It was a personal shopping service that helped people abroad buy products from the US and people would take a link. That's the plan, Words. People would take a hyperlink and drop it into our universal shopping cart. They would buy it from us, we would get the money, we would go on the website. So on Amazon, Etsy, allbirds put in our credit card information and our address in Delaware. We use in Delaware. It's a tax free state. So we would ship everything, sales tax free.
And then I ran operations for that company and it was my job to figure out how to ship products of any shape or size because we weren't really in control of the link that people would drop into the cart. So sometimes people would want to buy something really small and expensive, like a diamond ring, and then sometimes really big and bulky, like a surfboard. Yeah. And we had to figure out how to ship all those products around the world. And in running ops in that company, I realized that international is so much more than just the shipping. You have to have the regulatory compliance set. So every country has their own version of fda. Like in Canada, it's called Health Canada, and they have their own rules and regulations and duties. And taxes is another big component to it. Every country has their own tax regime. Right now it's, you know, we're in the news with our tariff rates and all that, but guess what, every other country also has tariffs, you know, and you have to know all those rules and regulations. Don't get me started on international returns. That's a whole other beast of a problem to solve.
[00:44:41] Speaker D: Holy cow. Yeah, that could be a big problem.
[00:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Can you imagine getting the stuff back? Almost impossible.
So my insight in running ops for the previous company, Lynx, was a lot of these things, they're intertwined. So the company that's delivering the goods physically is also the company that's helping clear customs in assessing the duties and taxes that are owed by the consumer or by the business for that shipment. Now, who's the company that's calculating the duties and tax on the website itself? Well, it's usually not the shipping company. Right. You don't really think of FedEx as like a software company that you're using to calculate duties and taxes. And it isn't FedEx. Right. But FedEx could be the one that delivers the goods. But there's this horrible disconnect that happens then because the amount that you ultimately get charged does not always match the amount that you as an E commerce business is charging the customer. Okay? And that's a really big problem because either a customer is going to overpay or you're going to underpay and it's going to kill your margin. Right? So one insight that I had was that these things should be all under one roof. And the same company that clears customs for you, that does the delivery should also be the same company that helps you calculate the duties and taxes in your shopping cart.
So I started Passport to basically bring the software and the physical logistics services together under one roof, under one company to give E commerce merchants like Chris. Actually, you know, I'm going to pitch you after this. I'm going to connect with you on LinkedIn, so watch out.
And we basically help merchants go global really, really easily in a turnkey manner.
[00:46:29] Speaker D: Well, that sounds like a really complex business model because all of the regulations that you've mentioned, all the different variables, all the different ways something can be shipped, you know, it could be ground transport from Canada or it could be airship, it could be ocean freighter. I mean, how do you manage all of that and still stay sane?
[00:46:49] Speaker C: Who said anything about staying sane?
So that's where value, I think, in business is unlocked. It's when you can wrangle that complexity and make it really easy for a customer. So from a customer's perspective, it's magic. The amount that our software is telling them to charge their customers in their shopping cart, online shopping cart matches the invoice, you know, and it's like, wow, I'm not losing money. It's exactly how much you told me to charge.
There's nothing held up at customs. We also have a service where we help big brands like Hexclad is a customer, maybe you heard of them, the Frying Pan company. We help them set up local operations in country. And that's a whole other set of challenges to set up local operations versus shipping, something cross border. And for us it was all about building things step by step. We didn't launch like what we have today. The suite of services that we have today is, I want to say 10x the suite of services that we had day one. So I think it's just about focus and not biting off more than you can chew. So that every step of the way we're being the best version of ourselves and able to provide a really high level of service and not just sort of Winging it for customers because this is their livelihood. At the end of the day, most E commerce businesses, they're not, you know, venture funded or anything like that. They're owner operated. And if there's a big loss on international, it's going to distract away from the domestic business and it's going to be that person's, that owner's personal income. So we take this very seriously.
[00:48:29] Speaker D: So Chris, you're not in your head, in agreement.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: There's a real need, you know, like you said. Who said you're not going crazy doing it? I mean hard things shouldn't be easy, Valuable things shouldn't be easy to do.
[00:48:40] Speaker D: Right.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: And I think what you're doing is providing a real service for international like because right now we're in seven countries with dugout and the outside of US Canada, it's kind of complicated to deal with. So yeah, I, I'm glad we're going to connect. I actually had that note down here myself because I think there's some synergy, not to mention with my colleagues. Right, but, but yeah, I think you're providing a pretty cool, unique service that we're in a global economy now. Cryptocurrency, blockchain, AI being scared of any of it. It's just a waste of time. You got to just learn how to adapt and how to harness it because it's here whether we like it or not.
[00:49:13] Speaker E: I agree 100% with that. Harness it, don't let it drag you along. We're talking to Alex Yankter with passportglobal.com right now. Do you have any great stories where somebody came to freaking out and you were able to help them through their situation?
[00:49:27] Speaker C: Well, in a startup everybody's always freaking out and we try to hire people so that they're not coming to me to solve the problem, but I'm giving them the air cover to figure out themselves. But I think one story that I can tell, I wouldn't say anybody was necessarily freaking out in this particular story, but it was just like a call to arms for us. So when we started, we're very, very small. Obviously you're starting with one customer. We're close to a thousand customers now, but the journey of a thousand miles or a thousand customer begins with one step and one customer. Right. And you have this chicken and egg problem where we're trying to be like the modern day version of dhl. We're trying to harness all of those complicated pieces of the supply chain but we don't have enough volume to go open up A warehouse. Hire a bunch of warehouse workers and engage with the fairly complicated supply chain of shipping a single parcel like this big around the world. You need a first mile to warehouse, you need the warehouse. You need to go from the warehouse to the airport, from the airport, you know, on an airplane, to a country, from a country. You need to plug into a last mile network, right? All of that's very, very complicated.
So a first thing that we did was we white labeled a company that was in the space and we had a deal with the company. We said, okay, we want to build our brand. So we're going to basically tell customers that you are us and we are you and you're not going to really surface your brand, whatever. A white label, basically what a white label is, right? But we need to be in control of the logistics and operations.
And the relationship was really solid. And they were in. The partner was a really good communicator. But we're just one customer. They themselves have a thousand customers. So we're one out of a thousand customers. And everything that we need in order to do a good job and really reinvent international internationalization and international shipping and create the kind of experience that we wanted to create, it was just impossible. They just weren't really set up to do things the way that we wanted to do them. So we had a existential question for us as a company because we knew we weren't going to make it if we were just basically a wrapper, right? A white label around another logistics company that's only so good and is holding us back from reaching our potential. So we had a question. Do we build this internally or do we buy a company basically like an asset based company that gets us into what we need? And we went down both routes, not so much, couldn't decide. But both routes are very risky in their own right. So we thought let's push along both routes and go with one when we see one is working, right? So what we ended up doing is acquiring a company called Axis Worldwide based in Atlanta.
And the CEO of that company became the chief operating officer of Passport. And we got into the asset based international shipping game that way. And I'm so glad we did it because the build it ourself path, we were kind of blind leading the blind. I mean, we did hire some good people, but at the end of the day, they had never built something like this from scratch and speedrunning it as well because we already had customers.
So fast forward, you know, four years. So the first four years was working with the White label. In the last four years we've been operating under our own network. You know, we're in three warehouses here in the U.S. we have a warehouse in, in, in UK.
But I would say every step of the way from will this deal go through to how do we transition our customers off of the white label solution onto our own proprietary network that was, you know, fraught with risk and stress and all that but at the end of the day it worked out and I'd say we're one of the biggest E commerce shippers around the world at this point.
[00:53:23] Speaker D: We're with Alex Yancer from Passport Global. Really interesting story about actually riding two parallel paths to see which one worked out. I'm just wondering in terms of your business career, what was the risk that you thought was most worth taking?
[00:53:41] Speaker C: Our very first non technical hire and the, I think it was the fourth hire in our company was this bright eyed young woman who was maybe two years into her career having no experience in the startup world or in logistics and became a associate at Passport. She was, I want to say like 23 because she's been with us for eight years now. Just this past week she got promoted to chief Operating Officer of Passport. I know I said that the CEO of Access World became the chief Operating officer. Actually misspoke. He became the chief Commercial officer, the cco because we specifically made a point and this is what I told him because he said naturally I'm going to be the coo. That's my title. I said no, you know, we're reserving that slot. This was four years ago, we're reserving it slot for a rising star in our company. And I don't want to peak and I don't want to peak her performance or you know, her opportunity by giving the title, this, the chief operating title to you. So we're going to give you a different title, we're going to give you the chief commercial title. And he owns, you know, our network, our pricing, all of that. So he owns a lot of the business but the daily operations was owned by somebody who is incredibly talented. But you're always taking a risk on somebody who's unproven and that's a risk that I would say really paid off. You know, she became a core part of the leadership team.
Every time our company hit a new growth mode like we needed at some point, I'm sure everybody on this call has this experience where you don't start off the company with an HR person. That's not one of your key, you know, first 10 hires. We waited until we were 50 people before we hired our first HR person. We had like a fractional company that did, you know, onboarding, offboarding and some other things. But we didn't have an HR person because this person who became our coo, she essentially functioned as that role. And then she hired the first one and built out the team and. And then that team rolled off her, you know, and she did that a couple times in the company where basically learned what it takes to kickstart a new function in the team. Got it wrong oftentimes in the beginning, but course corrected and just had such an incredible attitude and ability to fix things that weren't working, working. And yeah, every step of the way I would say, can she do this next level? Can she do this next level? Because usually the team that gets you to your first, call it 100 customers, your first 10 million, it's really not the team that gets you to a hundred million. And we're doing over a hundred million in revenue at this point. It's usually a different team. But we got lucky. We got lucky with this rising star who really had the capacity to learn and adjust.
[00:56:25] Speaker E: Well, that is a really great story. I don't think it was all lucky. How do people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:33] Speaker C: The best way I would say to reach out to me is my email. Alexasperglobal.com I am fairly active on LinkedIn, especially nowadays with all the global trade things happening around the world. So I'm on LinkedIn. It's just my name, Alex Yancher. And I'm also on X.
Again, just my name, Alex Yancher.
[00:56:53] Speaker E: Okay, great. Thank you.
[00:56:55] Speaker D: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth. Your heart.
[00:56:57] Speaker E: So now we are on to our next guest, Jim Rachnick. He is an innovative business leader with over 25 years of technology and management consulting experience, founded and partnered with multiple companies, and now he is the CEO of Haylock and of Reasonable Risk as cybersecurity expert. So he's going to tell us everything we need to know.
[00:57:20] Speaker D: How to stay secure with your technology.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: So, as was just mentioned, I'm the CEO of two exciting companies. I'd like to tell you a little bit about both of them. Haylock is a cybersecurity consulting firm. We provide professional services in cybersecurity. And just cutting to the chase, the one thing that we do better than anyone else is we help our clients to manage the risk of harm from cybersecurity with the same rigor that they manage the risk of harm from their primary product or service they sell. So Chris, you create a amazing products, mugs and all sorts of stuff. You pretty much are dialed into the risk of harm of that mug busting apart and hurting someone. You know the quality. But yet organizations out there oftentimes don't feel they have their finger on the pulse of the risk of harm of the data that they are a steward from.
If that data was breached, if that data was exposed, if that data was changed, what's the risk of harm to your customers, to your vendors?
That's important because bad things happen in good companies all the time. And if by allowing our customers to really understand the risk of harm, we'll allow them to avoid a position of negligence which helps them avoid expensive litigation. As an example, we all have sidewalks. And if someone slips and falls on your sidewalk and hurts themselves, God forbid they could sue you. Now, if you have a video camera that looking outside your dining room window and that you can demonstrate that you're shoveling every two hours when it snows, they can sue you. But you're not negligent because you are doing what you should, they can still sue you. They just won't be able to prove negligence and you will be able to avoid a lot of problems.
[00:58:54] Speaker D: As a business owner, I always wonder about the trade offs between speed and efficiency and cybersecurity since we rely so much on tech to run our businesses. One of my favorite issues is like the two factor authentication. I hate it just because it slows me down. And I guess I've just become a master of memorizing these six digit codes, right? But there's some value in that, right, because it's protecting the account. It seems to me like there's always a trade off then between efficiency and security. Is that your experience?
[00:59:30] Speaker B: You're absolutely right. You have to balance the risk and the reward.
In the example you just mentioned, Two factor authentication requires a second factor. Something you have, something you are, something you know. So the password is something you know. Second factor could be something you have or something you are biometric or our token. Now what you have to do is balance. Like you said, if you are a surgeon and you are risking not being able to log onto your laptop and save a patient, in that case, maybe the cure or the two factor authentication is worse than the disease.
So that's what you're balancing. You're balancing the burden of implementing that safeguard against the benefit the safeguard provides. That's absolutely a big part of CyberSecurity. On the Halox side, what we do is we help customers understand and manage their risk of harm of their cybersecurity processes in the same way, in the same quality, they manage risk of harm from the main product or service that they sell. Four years ago, we spun off a separate company and I became the CEO of Reasonable Risk, which is a next generation governance, risk and compliance platform. And it's become an industry disruptor and an industry innovator. And a little bit about how reasonable risk came to be. In helping clients at Haylock over a period of a decade build their security programs, we realized that our customers were struggling from three major needs in the marketplace. One was legal defensibility. Our clients wanted to avoid legal liability and they didn't know how to do it. And finding out when you have a class action lawsuit that you're now legally protected is not when you want to find out, you want to do that upfront so that it never gets there. Two, communication with executives. The inability of cybersecurity teams to effectively communicate with their leadership did not allow them to get the budgets to do the jobs they need to do. So they needed to communicate effectively. And three, long, expensive implementations. People want solutions they can implement immediately. So we created a software platform that gave them the ability to do all three. And now our approach is being adopted by regulators and attorney generals of 49 states. We are actually, our approach is becoming a standard in law. Haylock and Reasonable Risk are, you know, two separate companies.
They're very complementary to one another and we're actively growing both.
[01:01:46] Speaker D: So how would you advise an entrepreneur or a startup with respect to cybersecurity? Are they okay with just like buying off the shelf products or is there some other approach?
[01:01:58] Speaker B: It's a great question. I would say the, the basics that I would suggest that anyone do. The first step of entrepreneur buckling down their cybersecurity would be to do two things that every business today should be thinking about. The first is called a penetration test. It is a test. It's an ethical hacking test. It says if you have an electronic commerce website, if you have any digital presence, it could just be a website hiring a company. It's not very expensive to come in and see from the outside. What could they get, what can they come in with your approval and try to take. That tells you all the holes in your game, so to speak. It would be like hiring someone and giving them two hours to run around your house and see if they can walk in and what they can get. They provide you a report and you can then fix Those gaps, just about every law and regulation, from payment card industry to health records to financial industry, requires businesses to do that. So that's the first thing, is a penetration test. I think of that as almost like teeth cleaning. You should be doing it on a regular basis. That's one. The second is something called a risk assessment. Risk assessment is analogous to a yearly physical. You know, we all go to that yearly physical. And does that change our world? Sure it does, because the physical changes yearly. Physical gives you a report of everything, all the domains, and says here, you know, your blood pressure, your weight, your oxygen levels, these are some things you want to do. And these, these are some areas where you're not okay. So those two things, a penetration test and a risk assessment, are things that are a good thing for every entrepreneur to do. And as Alex mentioned, just like you don't hire an HR person, your first 10 employees, we didn't either. You may not be doing these things, your first five employees, but as you get bigger, as your data steward responsibilities grow, meaning if your data gets taken, exposed, modified, you have a responsibility. Because you could harm people, you should be doing a penetration test and a risk assessment. And there are a lot of companies that can do that. We can do that. But there are a lot of great companies out there that can do that.
[01:03:54] Speaker E: Is there anything a company would do that would attract a hacker? Like, are there things you can avoid doing, or are hackers just random?
[01:04:03] Speaker B: Hackers are both random as well as opportunistic. Hackers come at companies for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons, because they are opportunistic, is the data they can get. They have a lot of personally identifiable information, otherwise known as pii.
You are a good target if you have a lot of valuable information, you know, personally identifiable information that they could sell on the black web for a profit or that they can get credit card numbers that might create a target. If you are not patching all of your systems, if you're not keeping your things updated, they could perform an external scan and get a sense of how well are you maintaining your system, so to speak. So if you have valuable data coupled with, you don't seem to be doing your maintenance very well, that might create an opportunity for someone to say, you know what, let me invest a little bit of time and see if I could monetize that opportunity.
[01:04:51] Speaker E: What is the safest way to take credit cards? If you're selling something to somebody, do you have any ideas on that?
[01:04:57] Speaker B: You should seek to work with an organization that has demonstrated that they have certifications through pci, which is the payment card industry with that's one certification, accredited certification. Another thing that you should seek is to see what kind of compliance certification. Do they have a soc? One, do they have a SOC two, do they have a SOC for cybersecurity or do they have what's kind of the black belt of cybersecurity, which is an ISO 27001 certification? If they've certified their systems and they've put themselves through a certain amount of rigor, that demonstrates that they're not just putting in place technical things, but that their entire company and including senior leadership, that the governance mechanism is working, which is what those certifications require. That should give you a much greater sense of comfort that the organization you're working with takes cybersecurity seriously. We've all gotten that postcard in the mail that says, hey, sorry we were breached, your information was exposed. Some of us, hopefully not many of you have experienced that. All of a sudden you're getting new credit cards or identity theft and other things. So what you want to do is work with companies that take cybersecurity seriously and you can usually get that from their website in the certifications that they post.
[01:06:13] Speaker E: Well, that's really helpful information. Thank you. So we'll come to the end of our segment, but how do people find.
[01:06:19] Speaker B: You either on either one of the companies, halochal o c k.com or reasonable risk.com you can submit a contact us form, I'm available on LinkedIn or you could email me at jmir o c h n I k@haylock h a l o c k.com Great.
[01:06:41] Speaker E: Thank you very much. It's time for us to go to break listeners. You are listening to the passage to Profit show Road to Entrepreneurship with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and our special guest Chris Denner who has dugout mugs. And we will be right back.
[01:06:55] Speaker F: I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged. If you've been involved in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or injured at work, you have rights and you may be entitled to money for your suffering. Don't accept an offer you get from an insurance company until you talk to a lawyer. And we represent some of the best personal injury lawyers you can find, tough lawyers that will fight to win your case. And they're so good they stake their reputation on it by only getting paid if you win. So if you've been in a serious car, truck or motorcycle accident or hurt on the job. Find out today for free what kind of compensation you may be entitled to. Call the legal helpline right now.
[01:07:40] Speaker G: 8004-9270-1480-0492-7014.
800-492-7014.
That's 800-492-7014.
[01:07:54] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit.
[01:07:56] Speaker D: Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit, and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passage profitshow.com website and check out.
[01:08:09] Speaker E: Her album Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. And we are going to go first. First, Alex Yanchardt with passportglobal.com what is a secret you can share with our audience?
[01:08:24] Speaker C: When I was fundraising for Passport, I got some good advice, advice that I've heard a million times, but sometimes it really finally sticks. Keep it simple, stupid.
[01:08:32] Speaker E: Keep it simple, stupid. That's a good one. Thank you. Okay, Jim Marochnick with reasonablebrisk.com and haylock.com? what is a secret you can share?
[01:08:41] Speaker B: I often get asked, what do I think about starting this business or that business? And in answering those questions, I started to realize that whether it's looking at someone else's business or looking at kicking off a service or a department within our business, that there really are some commonalities. There really are kind of lenses or filters that I think we generally put things through. And I think it's helpful for new entrepreneurs to think about that. And the first lens is identify what problem or pain your business solves. Perform an honest assessment on yourself to identify what perspective are you entering the business from. Then think about moving forward, but at least go through the rigor of considering all those steps instead of just saying, I'm good at this, I should build a business around it. So that would be kind of my guidance slash, secret to new entrepreneurs.
[01:09:27] Speaker E: That is a really powerful secret. Okay, Kris Denner, what is your secret?
[01:09:32] Speaker A: I always tell people, stop wasting time on things that don't matter. And that's as blunt as I could be about it. But that's exactly what I'll say to people when you realize that time is out of your control. You know, time, money, and all these things are just an illusion for the most part anyway. Putting it into that perspective really will help you make some better decisions and ask better questions.
[01:09:54] Speaker E: I agree 100%. In fact, wait till you hear my secret, which I thought of my secret before the show so, Richard, what is your secret?
[01:10:03] Speaker D: My secret is, from a business standpoint, set high goals.
You know, one of the things that one of my business coaches once said to me is that one of the hardest things he had to do with CEOs was to get them to set goals that were big enough.
And that was one of his challenges.
And, you know, this last couple of years at the firm, we've set some pretty high goals. And what has really been amazing and delightful is to see how we've risen to hit those goals. And I think before, I didn't really set challenging goals, but it seems like the team really likes having challenging goals and they're stepping up to it. And it's really exciting to be a part of that, to be a part of a team that's really engaged, working to something meaningful. So I would say set high goals.
[01:10:55] Speaker E: My secret was going to be, and I was thinking about this yesterday, don't hang out with people that bring you down.
Life is short, and you get to choose how you live it for the most part. I mean, you don't get to choose everything. Like, I don't know, Chris, if you would have chose to almost die. But don't be around people that you don't want to be around, if you can at all avoid it. And the kind of people I like are the people that have a really positive attitude and that are moving forward in their lives.
And those are the kind of people I want to be around. So I'm really doing as much as I can right now just to focus on that and to always focus on positive things. Of course, bad things happen, but I try to keep my attitude positive all the time because I'm a happier person that way.
[01:11:35] Speaker D: And I'm a happier person that way, too. Well, that's it for us. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team. Our producer, Noah Fleishman, and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, our studio assistant, Rishikep Busari, and our social media powerhouse, Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gerhardt Law is here for your patent trademark and copyright needs. You can find us at gearhartlaw. Com and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
